Mom Fears Dad in Boy's Disappearance

The mother of 13-year-old boy Dylan Redwine, who disappeared a week ago during a court ordered visit to his father, fears that the dad may have done something to "remove Dylan from the situation."

Dylan Redwine was last seen at the home of his father, Mark Redwine, when he vanished seven days ago.

"I was married to Mark for a lot of years, and I know the way he reacts to things," Elaine Redwine told ABC News. "If Dylan maybe did or said something that wasn't what Mark wanted to hear, I'm just afraid of how Mark would have reacted."

Elaine and Mark were divorced and live about five hours away from each other, ABC News affiliate KMGH reports. Dylan was staying at his father's home because of a court order granting his father visitation rights for Thanksgiving.

Elaine Redwine told ABC News she believes her ex-husband was upset that she was the court-mandated primary custodian of their son.

"I don't think Mark treats him very well," Elaine Redwine said. "I would not put it past Mark to have done something to remove Dylan from the situation. You know, like 'if I can't have him, nobody will.'"

Dylan had been with his dad in Vallecito, Colo., for just one day before he went missing. Mark Redwine told police that his son was in his home when he left to run some errands at 7:30 a.m. When he returned four hours later, the boy was missing.

Minnesota Man Allegedly Shot and Killed Teens During Break-In Watch Video

FBI's Most Wanted Fugitive Could Be Hiding Among Mormons Watch Video

California Drunken Driving Case: Woman Drove With Dying Man on Car Watch Video

Elaine Redwine told ABC News she was having a difficult time getting in touch with her ex-husband about their son.

"He hasn't had any contact with us. [My older son] tried to get a hold of him by texting him, and he wouldn't respond," she said. "I just find it odd that at a time like this, he would be so evasive."

Mark Redwine declined to speak to ABC News.

Police say they are considering a number of possibilities, including abduction and the possibility that Dylan ran away.

"Foul play is definitely something we are looking at, but we're hoping it's a runaway case and that Dylan will show up and will be fine," La Plata Sheriff's Office spokesman Dan Bender said. "Because we don't have any clues that point in any particular direction, we have to consider every possibility."

Dylan's mother and older brother both insist Dylan wouldn't run away without contacting them, or if he did run away from his dad's home, he would have gone to them.

"When he was afraid in any situation, he knew he could call me and I would drop everything and go out there, first thing," Dylan's brother, Cory Redwine, 21, told ABC News. "He knew that me, my mom, my step-dad, any of us, if he called us and said, 'I need your help,' he knew we'd be there."

Hundreds of people have turned up to help search for Dylan, but so far police say they are no closer to finding him.

"We had people in the air, on horseback, on ATVs, search dogs, and we got no clues from any of that," Bender said.

Dive teams are searching nearby Vallecito Lake using a high-powered sonar gun, after searches this weekend revealed nothing, according to KMGH. Search teams are also combing the shoreline around the lake.

Elaine Redwine told ABC News she thinks somebody must know something, and she hopes they come forward.

"Vallecito is a small community. If anybody has seen anything or knows anything, no matter how big or small it seems, please tell us," Redwine said. "Everything right now is crucial to bringing my little boy home."

Redwine is described as 5 feet tall, 105 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes and fair complexion. He was last seen wearing a black Nike shirt, black basketball nylon shorts, black Jordan tennis shoes and a two-tone blue and white Duke Blue Devils baseball hat.

Read More..

Tidying up the 2012 election

They are still counting votes in Ohio, a process that once seemed as if it might transfix the nation and require the attention of the Supreme Court, but now it’s something more like an asterisk.

County elections boards around the state are putting the finishing touches on the democratic process. They must decide which of the more than 200,000 provisional ballots should be accepted and which rejected.

Read More..

Bread-and-butter issues dominate forum on values

SINGAPORE: A forum for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents to share what societal values and qualities are important to them was dominated by bread-and-butter issues instead.

The discussion held at the Woodlands Galaxy Community Club on Sunday was organised as part of the Our Singapore Conversation national project. It was hosted by Sembawang Group Representation Constituency (GRC) grassroots advisers, National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan, Mr Hawazi Daipi, Ms Ellen Lee and Mr Ong Teng Koon, who are also Members of Parliament.

The 250 participants - residents who come from all walks of life - were broken up into groups of up to 12, with facilitators to lead the discussion. The participants, about a quarter of whom were new citizens or Permanent Residents, had been expected to provide input on the type of society and home they would like to have in 2030 as well as how they can work towards achieving their desired future.

However, the one-and-a-half-hour discussion was mostly spent on issues such as cost of living and housing, as well as municipal complaints like the low-frequency of bus services and the litter situation in the estate.

For example, a participant in her 60s cited worries about rising healthcare costs. When a facilitator asked her what could be done to alleviate the situation by 2030, she replied that she did not want to think so far ahead.

Other older participants said they were worried that their children or grandchildren may not be able to afford their own homes, while some wondered if there will be enough homes for everyone in the future.

Younger participants spoke about the challenge of balancing work and family while they try to keep up with the rising cost of living.

Among those who kept to the discussion's theme was Singapore Management University undergraduate Clarine Chai, who felt Singaporeans should have a sense of gratitude. Retiree Chong Weng Yoke suggested focusing on moral education from young to inculcate values such as respect, while Garry Luyun stressed the need for new citizens like himself to "integrate ourselves and work as a team, as a community".

At the end of the session, Mr Khaw noted that many of the participants used the opportunity to engage him on housing concerns, given his portfolio. He also assured the residents on the availability and affordability of flats.

Speaking to TODAY, Sembawang GRC MP Ellen Lee said that residents airing their grouses at the discussion was "not surprising at all".

On the challenge of getting residents to focus on the themes of the national project, Ms Lee said: "The value is not obvious but the process itself is important because the process itself shows that the Government wants to hear them ... even if they can't think so far ahead, it doesn't matter, at least we have approached them."

- TODAY

Read More..

Union govt cancels coal block allocated to Himachal Pradesh

SHIMLA: In a major setback to the ambitious plan of the Himachal Pradesh government to draw power through a thermal plant outside the state, the Union coal ministry has cancelled allocation of a coal block to the state. The state government, which wanted to create an additional source of power for winter months when electricity generation from hydro-power generation dips, will lodge a protest after ascertaining the details.

Sources said the Union coal ministry, in its letter dated November 23, intimated Himachal EMTA Power Corporation Limited and JSW Steel Limited about cancellation of the coal block. In June 2010, the Himachal Pradesh government decided to get a joint venture company to set up a thermal power plant in West Bengal to meet escalated power demand in the winter. The state government authorized Himachal EMTA Power Limited (HEPL) to set up a coal pithead at Raniganj in West Bengal.

Himachal Pradesh chief secretary Sudripta Roy said they are aware of the decision but a detailed order is yet to come. "On Monday we will ask for the detailed order to examine the reasons given by the ministry. We will protest," he said.

The chief secretary said thermal power would have helped the state overcome power deficit in the winter when hydro power generation goes down. "Now the union government is taking the plea that Himachal Pradesh has decided not to have thermal power plants so why would they need the coal block," he said, adding that they would check if this was the basis for the cancellation of the coal block.

In the summer, Himachal Pradesh supplies power to other states under the banking system and draws the same in winter when power generation in the state dips. With the onset of winter, power crisis has already hit the state. The situation will worsen with snowfall in the upper reaches. Officials said they would deal with the situation by using banked power in Haryana from next month.

Read More..

Distant Dwarf Planet Secrets Revealed

Orbiting at the frozen edges of our solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto's little sibling.

Discovered in 2005, Makemake—pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god—is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term "planet" and the creation of a new group of dwarf planets in 2006. (Related: "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule.")

Just like the slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles our sun beyond Neptune. Researchers expected Makemake to also have a global atmosphere—but new evidence reveals that isn't the case.

Staring at a Star

An international team of astronomers was able for the first time to probe Makemake's physical characteristics using the European Southern Observatory's three most powerful telescopes in Chile. The researchers observed the change in light given off by a distant star as the dwarf planet passed in front of it. (Learn how scientists found Makemake.)

"These events are extremely difficult to predict and observe, but they are the only means of obtaining accurate knowledge of important properties of dwarf planets," said Jose Luis Ortiz, lead author of this new study and an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, in Spain.

It's like trying to study a coin from a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more, Ortiz added.

Ortiz and his team knew Makemake didn't have an atmosphere when light from the background star abruptly dimmed and brightened as the chilly world drifted across its face.

"The light went off very abruptly from all the sites we observed the event so this means this world cannot have a substantial and global atmosphere like that of its sibling Pluto," Ortiz said.

If Makemake had an atmosphere, light from the star would gradually decrease and increase as the dwarf planet passed in front.

Coming Into Focus

The team's new observations add much more detail to our view of Makemake—not only limiting the possibility of an atmosphere but also determining the planet's size and surface more accurately.

"We think Makemake is a sphere flattened slightly at both poles and mostly covered with very white ices—mainly of methane," said Ortiz.

"But there are also indications for some organic material at least at some places; this material is usually very red and we think in a small percentage of the surface, the terrain is quite dark," he added.

Why Makemake lacks a global atmosphere remains a big mystery, but Ortiz does have a theory. Pluto is covered in nitrogen ice. When the sun heats this volatile material, it turns straight into a gas, creating Pluto's atmosphere.

Makemake lacks nitrogen ice on its surface, so there is nothing for the sun to heat into a gas to provide an atmosphere.

The dwarf planet has less mass, and a weaker gravitational field, than Pluto, said Ortiz. This means that over eons of time, Makemake may not have been able to hang on to its nitrogen.

Methane ice will also transform into a gas when heated. But since the dwarf planet is nearly at its furthest distance from the sun, Ortiz believes that Makemake's surface methane is still frozen. (Learn about orbital planes.)

And even if the methane were to transform into a gas, any resulting atmosphere would cover, at most, only ten percent of the planet, said Ortiz.

The new results are detailed today in the journal Nature.

Read More..

No Powerball Winner; Jackpot Grows to $425 Million

Nov 25, 2012 10:37am

                                                                (Image Credit: Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo)

The Powerball jackpot has swelled to $425 million, the largest in the lottery’s history, after no tickets matched the winning numbers in a drawing Saturday night.

The Powerball numbers for Saturday were 22-32-37-44-50, and the Powerball was 34.

Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer said the jackpot could get even bigger before Wednesday, because sales tend to increase in the run-up to a big drawing.

The previous top windfall was $365 million. The jackpot was claimed by eight co-workers in Lincoln, Neb., in 2006.

PHOTOS: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

While millions of Americans can have fun dreaming about how they’d spend the jackpot, the odds of winning are 1 in 175,000,000, according to lottery officials.

To put that in perspective, a ticket holder is 25 times less likely to win the jackpot then they are to win an Academy Award.

Even still, the old saying holds true: “You’ve got to be in it to win it.”

SHOWS: Good Morning America

Read More..

Obama’s pick for CIA could affect drone program

President Obama began his first term with a dramatic change of course for the CIA, issuing orders on his second day in office to close the agency’s secret prisons and ban harsh interrogation techniques.

As Obama approaches a second term with an unexpected opening for CIA director, agency officials are watching to see whether the president’s pick signals even a modest adjustment in the main counterterrorism program he kept: the use of armed drones to kill suspected extremists.

Read More..

British PM "open-minded" on press regulation

LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron is keeping an open mind about the regulation of the press, his office insisted Saturday, after a newspaper report claimed he would reject full-blown state regulation.

British newspapers are nervously awaiting the publication on Thursday of the first results from an extensive judge-led inquiry into press standards which could result in tougher regulation of the industry.

The Mail on Sunday reported that Cameron would beef up the current system of self-regulation and replace the Press Complaints Commission, which is staffed by newspaper editors.

The newspaper said Cameron would stop short of tougher measures, but would hold out the threat that a statutory system could be brought in later if the behaviour of the press fails to improve.

But Downing Street played down any suggestion that Cameron had already made up his mind on the Leveson report -- named after the judge who is leading the inquiry -- which is supposed to remain secret until Thursday.

Cameron and a handful of senior government figures will see it on Wednesday to allow them to prepare their response.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister is open-minded about Lord Justice Leveson's report and will read it in full before he makes any decision about what to do."

Victims of press intrusion are calling for the introduction of an independent regulator, with the backing of the law, while editors have warned that statutory regulation would limit press freedom and hamper investigative reporting.

Cameron set up the inquiry in July last year in response to revelations that the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World hired a private investigator to hack the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler after she disappeared in 2002.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

Assam's ethnic violence: Relief camps are empty but people are not back home

KOKRAJHAR (ASSAM): The food is running out, children are falling ill, her only saree is fraying, and so is her spirit, rambles Zohra bewa, or Zohra the widow, as she introduces herself, stepping out of her makeshift home - a blue tarpaulin sheet propped up by bamboos.

Displaced on July 24, when her home in Sapkata village was burned down, the middle-aged woman and her children joined the human tide of more than 4.8 lakh refugees swept into hundreds of relief camps across three districts of western Assam - the largest displacement seen in the country in recent times.

Today, the number of people in relief camps has come down to 36,000-odd people. The emptying of the camps has led the outside world believe the worst is over. Even the government has showcased this as evidence of successful rehabilitation, downplaying the more revealing statistic - only 5,252 families have been given financial assistance by way of the official rehabilitation grant. Counting 10 members in each family, the number of beneficiaries comes to just 52,520 people, a fraction of those affected by the violence.

To start with, only those whose houses were burned or damaged have been considered eligible for rehab assistance - a cheque of Rs 20,700, three bundles with 7 tin sheets each, four tarpaulin sheets, eight poles of bamboo, and a month of food rations. It is bad enough that the grant is barely enough to rebuild homes and lives, say people. Worse, many who lost homes have had to go without it, since they do not own land, an additional eligibility criteria insisted by the Bodoland Territorial Council in the first round of rehabilitation. But what is the worst of all, they point out, several thousands who left the relief camps, keen to get back in time for the harvest season, haven't made it back and find themselves stranded in between.

Zohra is one of them. After nearly three months in Kathalguri relief camp, when she trekked back to her village in late October, she found her neighbours had propped up tents in a clearing outside the village. Their quarter of the village was not safe, they cautioned her, since it faced Bodo settlements. Better to live huddled with other Muslims. Soon, a hundred tents had sprung up in the clearing, a makeshift camp of sorts. In Horiyapet village, the makeshift settlement is even larger: a thousand tents scattered in the open, their blue and black plastic sheets glinting in the afternoon sun, sheltering people from as many as six villages.

Unlike the government relief camp they left behind, where supplies of food and medicines trickled in regularly, drinking water tanks were chlorinated, latrines were fumigated, and NGO's unloaded bundles of clothes every now and then, in the makeshift camps, the people have been left to fend for themselves. "We were given 10 days of ration but that's over," says Sobor Ali, who lives in Sapkata makeshift camp. "We are trying to make do by selling bamboo and wood, but that barely brings in any money."

District officials say they know of a large number of such makeshift camps in Gossaigaon division, the worst hit part of Kokrajhar district. They say they occasionally send food, but are wary of stepping up relief supplies to those who have returned home without going through the official process of rehabilitation, lest they be seen as aiding illegal immigrants. "We are trying to address the problem," is all that Jayant Narlikar, the deputy commissioner of Kokrajhar, is willing to say.

Meanwhile, as she wraps the pallu of her saree tighter around her shoulders, Zohra can sense the worst is not over -- with winter setting in, and no warm clothes available.

Read More..

Distant Dwarf Planet Secrets Revealed

Orbiting at the frozen edges of our solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto's little sibling.

Discovered in 2005, Makemake—pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god—is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term "planet" and the creation of a new group of dwarf planets in 2006. (Related: "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule.")

Just like the slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles our sun beyond Neptune. Researchers expected Makemake to also have a global atmosphere—but new evidence reveals that isn't the case.

Staring at a Star

An international team of astronomers was able for the first time to probe Makemake's physical characteristics using the European Southern Observatory's three most powerful telescopes in Chile. The researchers observed the change in light given off by a distant star as the dwarf planet passed in front of it. (Learn how scientists found Makemake.)

"These events are extremely difficult to predict and observe, but they are the only means of obtaining accurate knowledge of important properties of dwarf planets," said Jose Luis Ortiz, lead author of this new study and an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, in Spain.

It's like trying to study a coin from a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more, Ortiz added.

Ortiz and his team knew Makemake didn't have an atmosphere when light from the background star abruptly dimmed and brightened as the chilly world drifted across its face.

"The light went off very abruptly from all the sites we observed the event so this means this world cannot have a substantial and global atmosphere like that of its sibling Pluto," Ortiz said.

If Makemake had an atmosphere, light from the star would gradually decrease and increase as the dwarf planet passed in front.

Coming Into Focus

The team's new observations add much more detail to our view of Makemake—not only limiting the possibility of an atmosphere but also determining the planet's size and surface more accurately.

"We think Makemake is a sphere flattened slightly at both poles and mostly covered with very white ices—mainly of methane," said Ortiz.

"But there are also indications for some organic material at least at some places; this material is usually very red and we think in a small percentage of the surface, the terrain is quite dark," he added.

Why Makemake lacks a global atmosphere remains a big mystery, but Ortiz does have a theory. Pluto is covered in nitrogen ice. When the sun heats this volatile material, it turns straight into a gas, creating Pluto's atmosphere.

Makemake lacks nitrogen ice on its surface, so there is nothing for the sun to heat into a gas to provide an atmosphere.

The dwarf planet has less mass, and a weaker gravitational field, than Pluto, said Ortiz. This means that over eons of time, Makemake may not have been able to hang on to its nitrogen.

Methane ice will also transform into a gas when heated. But since the dwarf planet is nearly at its furthest distance from the sun, Ortiz believes that Makemake's surface methane is still frozen. (Learn about orbital planes.)

And even if the methane were to transform into a gas, any resulting atmosphere would cover, at most, only ten percent of the planet, said Ortiz.

The new results are detailed today in the journal Nature.

Read More..